Descriptive Norm as a Moderator in Predicting Fundraising Responses from Involvement and Social Influence Susceptibility

With cuts in government funding, a lot of vital societal functions from medical research to disaster relief increasingly rely on charitable giving from individuals. Research has looked into characteristics of individuals who are more likely to give, and characteristics that may boost a fundraising message’s effectiveness. Our research seeks to understand interactions between certain characteristics of audience and fundraising messages in shaping favorable responses to fundraising messages. As a contribution to the marketing and charitable giving literature, this research represents the first examination of descriptive norms’ moderating effect on the relationships between involvement, social influence susceptibility and fundraising message responses. We demonstrate that taking descriptive norms into consideration can boost the effectiveness of targeting in obtaining donor support. Another contribution of this research is that it extends prior work on descriptive norms by showing that highlighting the prevalence of donations does not always increase fundraising effectiveness. Instead, fundraising campaigns may benefit more from portraying a lack of popularity in donating when targeting potential donors who are highly involved.